When it comes to designing the perfect interior for your property, how much consideration do you give to lighting? According to a recent article for Wokingham Paper, too many homeowners treat lighting as an afterthought when designing their homes.

If you’re lucky enough to be building your own property, make sure that you start thinking about lighting design early on in the process.

The place to start is with natural light. You want to maximise this in your home and there are a number of ways in which you can use natural light to not only make your home brighter, but also to make it feel larger.

Among the suggestions is installing skylights or even a glass ceiling on a side extension, or opting for a rear extension with large windows and plenty of glass.

When it comes to electrical lighting, think about how you can vary the layers of lighting in your home. The news provider explained that this can involve “high-level such as directional downlights, mid-level such as joinery or under-counter lighting, and low-level such as floor-recessed uplights”.

To make rooms both beautiful and practical, you need to think about what you’ll use each room for.

In a bathroom, for instance, make sure there is bright light around the mirror but also low-level lighting options to ensure you can turn it into a relaxing space when you want to unwind.

The Guardian, meanwhile, recently offered a guide to different kinds of interior lighting, noting that “nothing changes the mood of a room quicker than a new lighting makeover”.

One of the newspaper’s top tips is to utilise up lighting to bring a soft focus to a room, as this will enhance its ambience. There are a number of different ways in which to do this, including using directional lamps, whether they’re free-standing or table lamps.

If you want to introduce a more playful or decorative feel with your lighting, invest in pieces with unusual bases.

Or you could explore the use of USB chargeable lamps in the bedroom, which are growing in popularity. These often have multiple dimming settings, which allows you to tailor the mood in your bedroom to make it conducive to sleeping, relaxing or romance.

Another thing that many homeowners are making use of are smart LED light bulbs, which allow you to control the light levels in your property via the internet. As well as enabling you to turn lights on remotely, you can schedule your LED light bulbs to switch on and customise their settings.

The Guardian noted that, in the bathroom, you’ll want to make sure that you choose anti-glare lights and that areas like your bathroom mirror are lit evenly from either side, as well as above.

While it’s great to think about these elements of interior design when you’re carrying out renovations, or even building a home, that doesn’t mean you can’t follow some of this advice even if you’re not getting started on a large-scale home improvement project.

Introducing one or two new lights to a room can, as Wokingham Paper points out, make a significant difference to its appearance and ambience, making it a potentially affordable way to revamp your space.